The Wagner Group, a private military force some describe as mercenaries and others as Vladimir Putin’s personal private army, increases its control on military operations in eastern Ukraine, taking over for Russian military units along the front line, Politico reports.
Owned by Russian oligarch and F.O.V. Yevgeniy Prigozhin and made up of professional military contractors commanding the brute force of tens of thousands of Russian ex-convicts released to fight in battle, the Wagner Group has operated in Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic as a defacto Russian military force under the command of Putin.
US intelligence officials say shipments of weapons and munitions from North Korea are going directly to Wagner forces in Ukraine and are being paid for directly by the Wagner Group, not Russian government accounts. The US government designated the Wagner Group as a “military end user,” a classification that bars it from obtaining US technology, and has issued sanctions against the company and its owner.